


Forget me not

by Kirianna_May



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, Hurt/Comfort, I Tried, Langst, M/M, Major Character Injury, Soulmates, also how do I tag?, but what even is communication?, i guess, nobody dies so don't worry, they're both stupidly in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-10-29
Packaged: 2019-01-05 21:27:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirianna_May/pseuds/Kirianna_May
Summary: Lance has had feelings for Keith for a while, but it's nothing he can't conceal from the others and probably even for himself. Or so he thought, until said feelings make themselves known in the form of a disease threatening to kill him unless he confesses.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Here's my first fic (for this fandom and in general) so please be nice to me.

Lance missed the Earth, and it was no secret. He missed it the same way he missed his family, the two realities blurring and mingling together in a dull nostalgia most of the time. He missed the ocean and the shore, the glimmering sand under the sun, the hot white pebbles along the road, the birds chirping shrilly in the branches shook by the breeze…   
To the pretty flowers blossoming here and there - he had to admit - he never gave much thought. And yet, if asked, he would have loved to be given the opportunity of seeing even those again. So he thought at least, but in truth, what were the odds of him somehow finding earth flowers here in space?   
As unexpected as it seemed, Lance did end up seeing earth flowers again, and the same small, light blue ones that grew between the cracks of his front door steps at that.   
It was just petals at first. So small, so frail, the very firsts must have gone unnoticed. 

“That sounds nasty” came Pidge’s comment. Her voice cutting sharply through the coughing noises.   
The girl studied him, lifting an eyebrow and looking away from the symbol crowded screens hovering in front of her. Lance inhaled deeply, catching his breath after the brief fit. He shook his head and flashed her an amused grin.  
“Nah, it’s just the smell of whatever nightmare Coran is trying to cook.” He pointed his thumb in the general direction of the kitchen (from where, to be fair, a thick green mist was coming their way), before pouring himself a glass of water. Pidge’s eyebrow remained raised as she went back to her screens. She didn’t buy that at all.

Brushing aside the things he didn’t really want to address was kind of Lance’s speciality, he usually managed to fool even himself into thinking them utterly unimportant. Of course though, he was wrong.  
The coughs came and went during the day, leaving him panting and annoyed for a few seconds. They woke him up in the middle of the night, tearing him away from dreams filled with sun, warmth, laughter and kisses. They even came up during training, forcing the air from his lungs and distracting him enough to get shot by one of the training bots. Keith gave him a look halfway between an annoyed glare and a questioning concern.   
Lance decided he’d rather have the glare, so he breathed in quickly against the grating feeling in his throat and cracked a joke. Keith rolled his eyes and the groans from his other teammates covered nicely the last of his huffing coughs.  
He was determined not to worry anyone over something so trivial, he’d just have to wait for this annoyance to pass. So he thought at least, and he persisted until one evening masking his symptoms became even harder.  
The face that Keith - sitting right next to him – had pulled, after bravely (or foolishly) shoving in his mouth a rather generous spoonful of pinkish goo somehow engineered by Hunk, had sparked a loud, carefree laugh in Lance, one that was quickly bringing tears in his eyes before the air caught in his throat. The paladin brought a hand to his mouth, coughing harshly and grasping at the table with the other, trying not to get too frantic at the sudden difficulty that breathing proved to be.   
The easy chatter around the table came to an abrupt stop, Shiro placing a steadying hand on his shoulder, Pidge kneeling on her chair, seemingly ready to jump over the table to get to him. Lance couldn’t make out much other than the hushed mutterings of his own name going around the table, shuddering when Keith’s hand stopped hovering and tentatively touched his hunched back. Just as he vaguely began to realize that holding off panic was proving almost impossible, the fit suddenly stopped, leaving him wheezing and gasping for air. Lance slumped down, resting his cheek on the cold table beneath him.

His heart hammered in his chest and after a few sharp inhales he opened his eyes (which he didn’t really recall closing) still gasping, still gripping the side of the table like a lifeline. He lowered his other hand from his mouth and saw, swimming in his watery vision, a couple of small, delicate, periwinkle petals. He remembered those petals, picking the small flowers that grew here and there back at home would leave him with his hands covered in them, until he learnt to be more gentle.  
Allura’s voice calling his name, an alarmed edge to it, snapped him back from his memory, and he realized he must have been staring for a tad too long .   
Lance raised his head, feeling actually fine now that his lungs seemed to be working once again. He looked around at the concerned faces of his friends and bit lightly on his lip before attempting a smile and closing in a fist the petals on his palm. He cleared his voice and that seemed to lift a spell form the others, who suddenly moved to touch him and talk   
“What was that all about?” asked Pidge, voice a little squeaky with worry at the end “Should we get him in an healing pod?” Hunk went on anxiously, wringing his hands and looking at Lance as if he might actually collapse any minute   
“How are you feeling?”   
“Can you breath freely now? Do you think you can stand?”   
Shiro and Allura added to the chorus of questions and, probably most alarming of all, was Keith’s slightly scrunched up face, a silent worried expression that made Lance want to dig a hole for himself.   
“I’m fine, I’m fine” he shoved his hand in his pocket and waved the other dismissively, smiling wider, eager to brush off the whole accident. It proved difficult but he managed, avoiding a trip to the pods by letting Coran shine a light into his mouth and finding nothing.  
After that Lance could feel slightly nervous glances never fully leaving him, and he couldn’t really blame them, since even when he wasn’t coughing, his breathing was steadily becoming raspy and shallow. He suspected that it was mostly out of concern that Keith asked him so often to train together, after all he couldn’t properly choke to death if he had someone there to help him. Lance went along with it, but exercising was becoming a pain, an heavy weight soon settling deep in his chest, and he was actually getting worried as each cough left one or two blue petals fluttering out of his mouth.

For all of their observing the others hadn’t spotted the small petals yet, but they did notice the obvious signs of him not getting any better, at all. He knew it was all a matter of time before they bodily took him to the pods and the reason to came all too quickly, when he was helping Hunk and Pidge relocate some materials.   
The chatter was light and nice, and Lance was glad to be momentarily free from anxious glances. At least until he let one of Pidge’s projects fall unceremoniously to the ground, coughing so harshly that the only thing keeping him standing was the hand he gripped at Hunk’s shoulder when he hurried to his side. Looking down at the floor Lance could see the scattered metal pieces, and reasoned that he must have looked like he was going to die if Pidge wasn’t shouting at him for that. In all honesty he was also feeling like he was dying, considering how he couldn’t bring air into his lungs, no matter how he tried.   
When finally the coughing subsided enough for him to take a shaky, ragged breath, he found himself kneeling on the ground, Hunk’s hand moving in slow circles on his back. He looked down and saw small periwinkle flowers scattered in front of him, some caught in the hand he had in front of his mouth.  
The silence around him was only broken by his own gasps, his breathing still shallow. When he looked up he saw the other two staring at the pretty flowers in a bit of a daze.   
“Take him to the pods,” Pidge’s voice was barely more than a murmur, but Hunk nodded anyway.

Lance worried at his bottom lip: ignoring small petals nobody else saw was one thing, he had done a pretty good job at convincing himself that it was something that could actually happen in space, but coughing up whole flowers in front of others? That was a whole different matter. 

He got poked at, prodded and scanned, Coran running every test he could think of, even shoving him inside one of the healing pods for a few minutes in order to get better readings. When he finally got out, the two Alteans were looking at the screen projecting his vitals, all the other paladins standing around them too.   
Lance took a couple steps towards them while trying to decipher the expressions on their faces. Some eyebrows were raised high, others knitted together, Hunk did look a bit queasy but they were supposedly looking at his insides, so who wouldn’t? Lance decided to take a shot at optimism tho, cause what did he have to lose anyway?   
“Is it a space flu?” he asked running his hand along his neck “do I need shots? I’m not a big fan of needles to be honest.”   
When nobody turned to look at him, he attempted a glance at the screen, confusion quirking his brow and narrowing his eyes   
“Wait what is that-”   
“Flowers” came Coran’s answer, matter of factly  
“Yeah I can see that-”  
“In your lungs” elaborated Shiro, in a tone hard to place.  
To be fair, it probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise after actually coughing them up, but still, seeing flowers in there threw him in a bit of a daze as he stood staring silently at the screen.   
“I’ve never seen anything like this before” breathed the princess, almost to herself, shaking her head lightly.  
Reaction to the stupor that seemed to floor them all came in the form of a frustrated rumble from Keith “Okay, he has flowers in there, can’t you just take them out?”   
Allura cradled her cheek in the palm of her hand and shook her head again: “I don’t think so… the flowers seem to be too closely interwoven with the other tissues for a removal to be safe”   
Lance knew this was a really bad moment to think that the way Keith’s nose wrinkled in thought was cute, but it really was and he was a simple man.   
“What about the healing pod?” wondered Pidge scratching her chin “would it make any difference?”  
Coran sighed: “It might slow down the growth of the plant but it’s not going to make it stop.”  
Silence fell once again, and if Lance could barely stand the worried looks from the previous days, right now he felt like he was attending his own funeral. This was honestly depressing.   
Hunk looked once more at the flowers and winched slightly.   
“He can’t be the first one to catch this, it must have happened to someone else before, right?”   
Coran nodded pensively “Yes, I would imagine it has happened before”   
“We will search for it” the princess gave an encouraging smile “and we’ll let you know as soon as we find anything.”

And so the days went by, daily check ups finding the flowers in perfect health and full bloom, breathing becoming progressively more of a conscious effort for Lance. He really felt like he was about to break any second, but then he’d spot Pidge’s downturned lips, Shiro’s slightly pained frown, hear Hunk’s furious baking, walk by Keith exercising himself to death and he really couldn’t help plastering a smile on his face and go cheer them up. He’d have time to panic once he was back in his own room.

As if on cue, when the atmosphere in the castle got a tad lighter, things spiralled quickly downwards once again. Lance supposed he had to consider himself lucky that this was happening during a relatively easy mission, which allowed his team to make for a quick escape when his condition got worse. What started with a few petals falling from his lips, quickly turned into a coughing fit that had him almost chocking on full flowers crawling up his throat in bundles. It was far more painful than he’d imagined, leaves and stems catching up on their way up, making him bring both hands to his throat, bayard clattering to the ground, in an attempt to catch some air back into his lungs.  
Keith and Shiro’s horrified expressions did give him a fair idea of how the whole situation must have looked.   
A brief stay in the healing pod had his throat in a good enough shape to talk without any pain once more, but after that, none wanted to risk it again, so he was practically forbidden from taking part to missions and left in the castle, feeling more of a burden with each passing day. Lance knew, at a rational level, that what they were doing was look out for him, but that didn’t stop him from telling himself how worthless he was.

If morale had been low when they first found out about the flowers, it was several feet underground now. Lance did sometimes find it in himself to put on a brave front when he saw his friends look at him in a particularly pained way, but it was getting more difficult by the day, and he could feel himself getting more irritable than necessary. On that note, he’d snap at Keith fairly often, for really silly things too, and then he’d be left feeling like crap when the guy just got up and left instead of picking up the fight. Honestly, at this point actually getting punched in the face would have made him feel better about himself at the very least.

“You do know that he just wants to help, right?” Hunk gave him a questioning look once Keith’s back had disappeared behind the sliding doors of the kitchen.  
Lance looked sullenly at the flowers scattered on the ground and in his hands, feeling the familiar taste of blood in his mouth.  
“I know,” he muttered and chewed on his cheek while staring at his knees “but I mean, it’s like every time he’s with me I’m worse than usual and all in all I really don’t want him to see me like that??”   
He lifted his head and stared Hunk right in the eyes, as if hoping for him to understand what he felt through sheer mind power.   
“I mean, with him being my…”  
“crush” supplied Hunk when Lance attempted to convey the last word with a generic hand gesture   
A small chocking sound and a couple of petals later Lance was able to speak again.   
“I was gonna say rival but sure, that too” he sighed in resignation, slumping against his friend’s shoulder.  
“What are we gonna do Hunk?” his raspy voice faltered dangerously over his words and the other twisted his neck to get a glimpse of his face.  
“About what?”  
Lance smiled to himself, leave it to Hunk to make him spell out things.   
“About me”  
An heavy silence met his words and Lance went on, resting his cheek on Hunk’s shoulder   
“I’m useless like this.. you know I am.” he added to shush any intention Hunk might have had of denying what he was saying   
“and Coran doesn’t tell me but my lungs look more and more like Swiss cheese and I may not have any medical training but I’m pretty sure I need those to live.”   
At least sarcasm hadn’t abandoned him yet, and he was glad because that was all he had right now to help keep the waterfalls at bay.   
Hunk moved to put some space between them and stared at him for a few seconds before tackling him in a bone crushing hug and croaking a barely reassuring   
“Stop spewing nonsense, it’s not that bad”  
And Lance knew it really was that bad, but making Hunk cry wasn’t on his wishlist, so he took the deepest breath he could and nodded, patting his back.

Researches to find out what kind of disease he had hadn’t stopped, and as he saw them get more frantic, Pidge joining Coran and the princess in scanning the seemingly endless archives, Lance felt even his rage begin to fade, leaving way to a sort of constant tiredness. Whether or not it came from the lack of oxygen he managed getting into his system, he didn’t know, but it made things easier to handle at the very least. Trying to pick fights with anyone wasn’t a cause of concern anymore, and he found that Keith’s reaction to his lack of energy was a sort of hurt expression that made his heart ache and more flowers tear their way out of his chest. 

Lance took to sitting in the observatory deck most of the time, gazing at the planets and constellations floating lazily on the walls and all around him. Soon enough the others developed the habit of orbiting there at different times of the day and night (or, well, what they had set as day and night on the castle), which he was glad for, because his coughing fits were becoming a frightening experience, and suffocating alone was a really present fear in his mind.  
Pidge would lay on the floor next to him, tapping away at her keyboard, and when he saw her eyes turn misty he’d do his best at taking her mind off, sometimes he’d succeed and get a small smile out of her, some others he’d settle for an angry and teary girl scrolling furiously through Altean texts without a word.   
Hunk was kind of violently ignoring the problem which, if possible, made it feel even more obvious that a problem was there. Still, sitting there with him chatting and eating was as great as usual and Lance loved it.  
Shiro came rarely to spend time alone with him, and Lance did feel hurt and cast aside, but he did also see the way the older paladin looked at him when he did come, like he had no idea what to do to help him and it was tearing him apart, and Lance supposed he could understand.  
Keith would often stomp his way up to him and stare him down like he wished he could actively engage in a fist fight with whatever was wrong with him. Lance suspected it was his way of expressing concern, and tried not to feel too pissed when after the staring contest Keith would just grimace and stomp his way back out of the room. Other times he’d flop down next to him and sit in silence. Those times usually ended up with Lance gagging on clumps of small, periwinkle flowers even bigger than usual.

Lance might not have been the sharpest tool in the bunch, but he was no idiot and it didn’t take him long to figure out that the familiar pang he’d feel in his chest when he was in close proximity with the red paladin was related with him coughing up bloodied flowers. What he did not know, was what to do with this piece of information. Yet he knew that Keith had no idea that he was making him worse, and also that spending time with him made him feel lighter no matter how much he suffered as payback. 

Keith was fiercely protective of him over the weirdest things, and he looked like he’d be content with getting a constant visual of Lance, just to make sure he wasn’t dying. Would Lance usually have been pissed off by that? Yes, he most probably would. Was this a usual situation he was finding himself in? Nope, it wasn’t. So he felt like he had a right to cut himself some slack.  
Evenings that would see them bundled close together in blankets became something he’d look forward to, letting Keith do most of the talking as his voice failed him more often, or sitting close on the couch when he felt adventurous enough to try walking all the way to the room it was in.   
Lance was… he wasn’t sure what he was. Was he happy to get to be so close to the other? Did he feel like the only reason this was happening was because he was sick and Keith felt bad for him? Did he think he was probably getting his hopes up over the normal behaviour of a friend really scared of losing him? Yes, yes and yes, but he still couldn’t help the warm pang of yearning and affection he felt when their pinkies so much as brushed. He couldn’t help the way less romantic lack of air he would experience after that though.

Keith, on his part, wasn’t faring much better on the feelings front, a whirlwind of contrasting emotions hit him pretty much every time he risked a glance at Lance. He was furious, his first instinct was to go train with a bot until he couldn’t think anymore, to possibly punch something hard enough to make it unrecognizable. But then, he also wanted to curl around Lance and never let go. He felt absolutely powerless, wished he could somehow do something to make things better, to have the usual annoying Lance back. He had ended up settling for being a sort of disgruntled body guard.   
There were moments when he felt his heart stutter in the dim light of far away stars, while Lance looked outside into space, and he ended up looking at Lance, the way the bluish hue softened his features and lessened the dark circles under his eyes. He knew it wasn’t the right time, and Lance’s rattling breathing would remind him that the boy was wasting away and he wasn’t doing anything about it.   
With a frustrated huff he’d bump their heads together as lightly as he could, which didn’t mean they never accidentally headbutted each other. It was frightening, in the calm that surrounded them he’d listen at Lance’s breathing, and every hitch he heard in the pattern could be the start of a new fit of coughing, it could mean blood splattering on the ground, the soft flump of a bundle of flowers falling.   
Keith had positively loved flowers all of his life, but now he had come to dread the mere thought. Forget-me-nots where the small, non threatening looking flowers that spilled from Lance’s mouth, and he couldn’t help but think that the only reason why his friend was still breathing at all, was that the flowers were so incredibly small.   
Missions were now different, Keith almost couldn’t bring himself to leave the castle, because what if something happened while he was away? What if he came back to find part of his family missing? 

His fear became all too real when the team came back only to find Lance inside a pod, Coran looking at his vitals with clenched fists and Allura pacing up and down the room, biting down on her thumb nail.   
The plant was growing fast, damaging tissues at a concerning rate and making it harder to breath by the minute.   
They still had no idea what to do, none could find anything anywhere about such a disease, the pod wasn’t doing much and all they could think about as buying Lance as much time as possible in the hopes of finding a cure. So the only solution they could come up with was to try and put him into one of the cryo pods, which would keep his condition stable.  
When asked, Lance wasn’t thrilled at the idea, not at all, not one bit.   
Being left behind for who knows how long? While his friends risked their lives on a daily basis? Waking up one day and finding them older and happy with whoever they had found to be his replacement? It really wasn’t his definition of a good plan, and if he had to be honest, all he wished for right now was the opportunity of seeing his family once more, and everybody knew that.   
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to be selfish enough to ask putting everybody in danger for his own sake. So he ended up sighing and slumping in his seat   
“Whatever, just try not to let 10.000 years pass before you take me out.”   
He was smiling, but ever since this whole ordeal had started, none had seen him look more miserable, and Keith couldn’t stand it, he felt like he absolutely had to do something or he’d explode.   
He pleaded with Allura for a wormhole to take them close to earth   
“I’ll take him! We won’t get caught, it’ll be quick and once we’re back we can do the cryo pod thing”  
The princess looked conflicted, “please understand, your home planet is incredibly distant, creating a wormhole for you to get there would leave us with very little energy and with only three paladins…”  
In front of the opportunity to finally do something, Keith couldn’t be asked to step back   
“I am going to sneak him out of the castle and take him home if you don’t do it” he growled, gritting his teeth.  
“No you won’t” came Shiro’s calm reply from behind him, the familiar weight of his hand on his shoulder grounding him and allowing his racing thoughts to slow down.  
“Why not” he bit back anyway  
Shiro squeezed gently on his shoulder in lieu of voicing the reason, which hung above them like mist.  
“Guys, it’s okay” Lance’s voice rose trough the thick silence and Keith’s shoulders dropped “it’s fine, it wouldn’t have been a really happy reunion anyway, you know, with me coughing up blood and all that.”

In the end, they all decided to have one last day before resorting to the cryogenic sleep. It was way less depressing than Keith thought it would be: they played, joked, tried to cook, almost gave Hunk a stroke with how bad they were and ended up just helping him preparing the dinner he had planned.   
Glancing around Keith couldn’t help but smile, everybody looked happier than they had been in what felt like forever.  
“And finally you don’t look like someone just kicked a puppy in front of you” Lance smacked his back and grinned, quirking one eyebrow “getting a smile out of you is almost worth it”.   
Lance was expecting a shove or a rebuttal of sort that never came, because Keith was too busy freaking blushing while staring at him??   
And, as some sort of punishment for finding it endearing, Lance felt his breath hitch, petals tickling at the back of his throat and proceeded to ruin the evening with a generous amount of blood trickling down his chin and flowers all over him.  
Once the blood had stopped and the panic had subsided, they all relocated to the observation deck, with blankets and pillows, and sat in a circle telling silly stories which were meant to be scary, until they fell asleep one after the other. 

Lance and Keith had ended up close to each other, bundled in the same thick blanket as usual, and stayed awake, looking outside and whispering from time to time. Lance was painfully aware that this was probably his last chance if he wanted to put his feelings out there in the open, since even if they did find a cure, who could tell how long it would take? He’d still be the same age then, not a day would have passed for him, while so many things could have changed for them over time.   
Did he really want to make things awkward and leave Keith with the burden of a one sided interest right before going to sleep for maybe years?   
He really didn’t, so he settled for scooting closer and resting his hand next to his, skin barely brushing and a strange feeling of fondness stirred inside him, a sort of nostalgia for something he didn’t really have, which made his chest ache. He hoped more flowers weren’t going to crawl up because he really didn’t want to ruin the moment.   
If cryo sleep allowed him to dream, he whished at least some of his dreams could be like this, a peaceful night spent watching the stars, the reassuring warmth of Keith against his side.

Keith on the other hand, was going though a very similar line of reasoning as Lance, and coming to very different conclusions.   
If he was going to have to say goodbye to the boy and let him sleep for what his most pessimistic side told him would be the rest of eternity, he wasn’t going to do so without being honest with him, because rejection would still be better than year after year of doubt slowly eating at him.  
He felt his heart beat speed up, his hands get clammy with the thought of what he was about to do, and tried to calm himself listening to Lance’s slightly labored breathing. Every hitch in the pattern made him more eager to confess, as if his time was running short.   
Keith had never been too good with words, he often said the wrong thing altogether, or the right thing in the wrong way, and yet what he wanted to say now was straight forward enough that he didn’t think it possible for himself to get it wrong. He nuzzled his cheek against Lance’s shoulder, and let their fingers intertwine, starting by tentatively locking their pinkies together and continuing with the others when Lance didn’t pull his hand away. He felt the boy stiffen just a bit against him, and looked up to see the ghost of a blush creeping up Lance’s neck.  
“Lance?”  
“Hm?” came the somewhat strangled reply  
“I like you” he blurted out the words, tangled together enough that it took Lance a few beats to process the meaning.   
Time suddenly felt incredibly still to Keith, in what took Lance to inhale he had time to regret his decision to a great extent, lift his head, take off his hand and start thinking of a way to escape the deck without waking up everybody nor trampling any sleeping form.  
Lance felt the meaning of the jumbled words slowly sink in, and wondered at the fact that he could still take in a shuddering breath. He turned to stare at Keith, who stopped looking around and stared back at him like a deer caught in headlights, eyes wide and petrified.   
Lance couldn’t help but think that by now he should be crouched on the floor coughing up flowers, but he somehow, miraculously wasn’t?   
An incredulous laugh bubbled inside his chest, warmth spreading on his cheeks, and he grabbed back Keith’s hand, squeezing it.  
“You do??”   
Hunk grumbled in his sleep and Coran turned over   
“You do?” Lance repeated in a whisper this time  
Keith could only nod, the smile he was given was dazzling and he frowned, looking away.  
Lance felt his cheeks hurt from how wide he was smiling, and leaned back against Keith’s side, giving him a quick, barely-there peck on the cheek before resting his head on his shoulder.  
Keith glanced down, hardly daring to breath, and while his brain was trying to make sense of the situation his mouth opened of its own accord   
“You like me too?”  
Lance snorted on a chuckle and nodded, squeezing his fingers lightly.  
He relaxed, letting his cheek rest against Lance’s soft hair, and trying not to think about tomorrow while an incredulous smile tugged at his lips.

The next day found them all in the medical bay. Saying goodbye had somehow been harder than any of them would have wanted to admit, the hugs they exchanged were made longer and tighter by the unspoken fear of Lance never waking up.   
Leaving on such a sad note made his heart break, but he had no idea how to make things lighter, so he just squeezed Keith’s hand, smiled as warmly as he could, and stepped inside the cryo pod, closing his eyes and hoping his friends wouldn’t forget him.   
The cold enveloped him in a rush of wind and his last thought went to the evening before, and how he had woken cuddled up to a sleeping Keith, and he wished he could see more of his sleeping face, hear the regular pattern of his breathing and feel his chest raise and fall under the palm of his hand.

When consciousness came back to him, the buzzing sound of people talking outside the pod, the bluish hue of the lights filtering trough his closed eyelids, he felt as if only a second had passed.   
He steered himself to see his friends changed forever and slowly opened his eyes when the cold air of the pod escaped with an hissing sound. In front of him everybody was standing with wide eyes, Hunk’s were red and puffy, Pidge looked like she could start crying at any time and Keith’s bewildered expression would have made him laugh if only he wasn’t so confused. Everything looked the exact same as when he entered the pod, did they find a cure in a matter of hours? He looked around and saw Coran gaping at him.  
“You guys are seriously freaking me out” he stepped out on wobbly legs and coughed, blood covering his palm. He looked down with wide eyes before looking back up at the others. There were no flowers coming from his mouth, not even a petal on his hand.   
“What the hell-” he was cut short by Hunk tackling him and lifting him off the ground in a hug that made Lance worry his bones might not make it.  
“You’re fine!” he bawled, not showing any intention of letting him down.  
Lance still had no idea what was going on. He craned his neck to the side “Coran what does this mean? How long was I out?”  
“Around ten minutes” answered Shiro while the Altean man was apparently still too busy staring at the screen in front of him and then back at Lance as if he’d seen a ghost.  
“Ten minutes?? What- why?”  
“Because the plant isn’t there anymore” said the princess, walking up to him and touching his cheek, as if to make sure he was really in front of her “your lungs are still damaged, so you are going to need time in the healing pod, but the plant is gone, you are going to be fine”  
Hunk finally let him touch the ground again, and Lance felt like his legs might give up any minute.  
“I’m fine?”  
“You are” the princess smiled and nodded, her hand covering her mouth as her lip quivered.

Stumbling out of the healing pod, Lance landed on Shiro’s chest, warm and firm as usual, and opened his eyes to everybody smiling widely at him. He felt so incredibly happy, so glad to be there, that he almost didn’t notice the few tears streaming down his face as he was taken into a group hug.   
His friends were there, Keith was there, he could be part of the team again, he could breath again, everything was beautiful, and in his happiness he really didn’t see anything wrong with grabbing Keith’s arm and smashing their lips together, not much of a kiss, but the only way he could think of to show how he was feeling.


	2. It is Fate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> after Lance's miraculous recovery Pidge keeps digging around trying to find out exactly what happened to him. She might not be completely satisfied with the explanation she's found, but Lance surely likes it enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally real life allowed me to finish this second chapter/sort of epilogue, I'm sorry it took so incredibly look, I hope you enjoy it anyway! :)

Weeks and then months had steadily gone by since Lance had gotten out of that pod and kissed Keith for the first time, in front of everybody. As a consequence the tentative first steps of their relationship had been very much public.  
They had awkwardly held hands during meals, Lance had draped himself over Keith after most training sessions, complaining that he deserved some cuddles, and Keith’s only reaction had usually been a blush and a half hearted shove.  
They even had what could be called a first date of sorts when Lance convinced Allura to let the castle land for a night on a deserted moon, and took Keith with him to explore it under the bluish light of the stars. They had both been particularly unbearable for a few days after that, a giggling mess of kisses and PDA.  
In all of this the others had been called upon quite often in order to give advice. Not surprisingly it was usually Lance who sneaked up on them while they were busy with something else, to ‘gush about Keith’ as Pidge put it. More surprising was Keith doing the very same thing all too often, asking incredibly hard questions, such as how long was he supposed to hold hands for, or how seriously should a pillow fight be taken.  
Although quite unexpectedly, the green paladin found herself becoming the unwilling confidante of both, and truth be told, if she heard one more word about Keith’s eyes and how pretty they were or any other half an hour of wonder at Lance’s smile, she was going to be literally sick.  
She had no idea that her troubles were about to get much worse than that. 

Lance and Keith still bickered often, much like they used to before becoming a couple, but their arguments were short lived and mostly just excuses to tease each other a little. Hunk had been dreading the prospect of them having an actual fight, while Coran had tried to reassure him that disagreements were to be expected and that he was sure the two paladins would work out whatever trouble they happened to have.  
Pidge wasn’t sure about how good they would be at working out stuff, considering how stubborn they both were, so she could only hope not to get involved in it, whenever it happened. 

As time went on she thought that maybe, just maybe, they were going to be alright on their own, because Lance seemed to let go of things way more often now, if he knew Keith would be ticked off. Discussing plans of attack for example, meant that Lance would mediate with him until they reached an accord that didn’t see Keith charging in from the front door, and encounters with diplomats saw Lance steering him carefully away any time he looked like he might lose his temper.  
All in all it meant that Lance was acting less like an idiot, and Keith was being more reasonable. 

Still, their first real fight came, took place right after a mission, and was quite worse than the others had expected.  
The two had been sent on what had been deemed an easy enough mission, with the objective of recovering samples of a mineral Hunk and Pidge wanted to study. The mission had proved to be more dangerous than they first thought, seeing how a small Galra settlement had been alerted to their presence on the planet. And they also ended up having to help a few prisoners escape. Still, Keith and Lance worked well together, so the situation wasn’t so dangerous as to require the other paladins’ backup.  
So Pidge and Hunk were just waiting for them to return to the hangar, a bit puzzled at the lack of back and forth flirting the two usually subjected them to over the comms. As soon as the two lions landed, the paladins saw Keith pretty much storm out of his, barely waiting for the ramp to touch the ground, angrily tearing off his helmet only to dump it onto the ground and run up to Lance, his face set into a threatening scowl. 

“What the hell did you think you were doing!?” his voice rumbled angrily around the hangar and Lance raised his hands in surrender as he saw him approach  
“I was just trying to help-“  
Keith cut him off, baring his teeth at him: “you were trying to get killed is what you were doing!”  
“Wh- no! You were the one putting yourself right in the line of fire-“  
“I was buying you and the prisoners time to run!”  
“you were gonna get shot!”  
“I had everything under control until you barged in! I’m way faster than you!”  
Lance blushed at that, if it was out of embarrassment or anger, the others couldn’t really tell.  
“So what, am I a burden now!?”  
“Yes, you are when you act like an idiot!”  
“I was trying to protect you!”  
“I don’t need protection Lance!” Keith’s voice had only been rising in volume and pitch, and even though they were standing at less than a few inches from each other, they were both shouting by now, their voices bouncing around inside the metal walls.  
“You’re my boyfriend, that’s what I’m supposed to do in the fist place!”  
“Then I’m not your boyfriend anymore! Since it’s gonna make you act like an idiot forget about it!”  
Pidge could hear Hunk’s quiet gasp from where he was standing next to her and she wanted to groan when she saw Lance’s face go from red to white and back to beet red in the span of an heartbeat, a sure sign that he wasn’t going to try and reason with him.  
“A- alright then!” he shouted, taking half a step back and managing to look more affronted than hurt.  
“Perfect!” Keith sneered angrily back at him before turning on his heels.  
They both marched off in opposite directions, still panting from all the shouting, cheeks red and brow creased.

The scene, soon related to the others as well, sent the rest of the team in a bit of a flurry. Hunk had already hurried after Lance, while Shiro decided on stationing close to the training deck, where he supposed Keith would end up in an attempt to simmer down.  
Pidge just sighed, knowing that one or both of them was going to come to her later that night or the day after, while she was trying to get some work done.

And obviously so it was. Dinner had been an awkward business that evening, mostly comprised of Allura trying to tiptoe around the subject, while Keith and Lance ate without a word, pointedly avoiding to even glance at each other.  
And now, hours later and well into the night time set on the castle, Pidge was sitting in the common room, tinkering away with a tiny box which, if she was right (and of course she was right), would allow them to store some extra fuel in their flight pods without the risk of them exploding which, boring but also useful. She heard the doors swishing open, and barely had any time to wonder which one of the two love birds needed her help this time, before Lance plopped next to her onto the couch.  
He wore an angry expression and his arms were crossed over his chest, but it all melted off pretty soon while Pidge just stared at him. He slumped forward, grabbing one of the pillows and hugging it. He didn’t look like he had much to say just yet, so she went back to work in silence, waiting for him to decide where to start.  
“Did I get dumped?” he asked after a while, after going through who knows what inside his head.  
She glanced at him, and almost felt a bit of compassion for a moment “I don’t know, did you two break up?”  
He slumped even further, his face disappearing into the pillow with a groan “that’s the point, did we?”  
She could only shrug “I guess you’ll have to ask him if you want to know where you stand now”  
Lance huffed in disbelief at her “I’m not talking to him! I was trying to save his sorry ass and this is the way he thanks me?”  
“Well, if you’re not talking to him how are you gonna find out whether or not you broke up?”  
He looked at her, an hopeful glint in his eyes “you could-“  
“Nope, not happening Lance, I won’t be going back and forth between you two”  
The boy just sighed, leaning back and staring at the dark ceiling above them  
“Was it really true?” he asked after a few minutes of silence  
“What was?”  
“You know… that thing you told me about Keith and I being soul mates”  
Pidge groaned loudly, setting aside her work “man do I regret telling you that now”  
“Come on, I need some cheering up!” he complained with a pout “so, was it true?”  
She tiredly rubbed at her eyes “I’ve told you a thousand times already..”  
“Just once more Pidge, please?” he tried puppy eyeing her and she made an unimpressed face “I’m sorry Lance that only works with Hunk”  
“Please?” he hugged her tightly and she ultimately relented.  
“Alright” she sighed “so, according to the legend, if you smell the black flowers on Larium, a flower will blossom in your chest when you meet the person you’re destined to be with”  
Lance’s face brightened with a wide grin at her words “See? We can’t break up if we’re destined together right?”  
“I don’t know Lance, finding this piece of lore is as far as I managed to go in my research on what the hell happened to you, and it matches pretty well with you being enough of an idiot to go and smell the flowers on an alien planet while on a mission, but don’t ask me to give much credit to the destiny part”  
Lance huffed, letting go of her, going back to sulkily cuddling his pillow and after a few moments Pidge went on “I can’t believe you haven’t told Keith yet, considering how much you like to hear this story”  
He shrugged, looking a little sadder than before “if you don’t believe it why should he? Plus you’ve heard him, he thinks I’m a burden most of the time”  
Pidge sighed, deciding that she’d rather listen to him describe Keith’s eye colour once again instead of this depressing nonsense  
“Lance, he doesn’t think that, he was just angry, go talk to him tomorrow or in a couple of days and it’ll be alright”  
He nodded and stood up, but with the face he was making he might as well have shaken his head.  
“Lance don’t be stupid, just talk to him”  
He nodded again “will do, goodnight Pidge”  
He waved once as he walked away and the girl just knew he had come up with god knows what reason why Keith would be better off without him for some time… which obviously, absolute crap, Keith was gonna be a nightmare until they made up.

She was right as usual, days went by in between awkward silences during meals, even more awkward silent fighting during training and either Keith or Lance fleeing the room any time they ended up in close proximity. It meant Hunk was stress-baking most of the time and the whole team was being incredibly bad when they practiced some kind of flying formation since two of their paladins would barely talk to each other.  
Shiro had them both sit down in front of him, which only resulted in them fighting again until Lance had stormed out of the room. Easy missions were made incredibly hard by the fact that Keith was acting more recklessly than usual, while Lance wouldn’t stop trying to cover him which again, meant Keith would get angry at him once more, sometimes in the middle of battle.

And so, after a particularly depressing evening spent basically watching Keith pace around her room - in which he had burst as if it weren’t the dead of night- and rant on and on about how Lance was acting like an idiot, came the moment when Pidge decided to do exactly what she had vowed not to do.  
She decided to openly meddle with this relationship because the wellbeing of the universe depended on it as well as her sanity at this point. 

She grabbed Lance after an unnecessarily hard training session and ushered him into an unused room of the castle.  
“Uh.. Pidge?” he gave her a slightly worried look as she locked the door behind her  
“Don’t fret, I just need to speak to you”  
“Can’t we talk in my room? Or the hall?”  
“No, I need to convince you to stop being an idiot”  
“Wh- hey!” he protested hotly “I’m not the one acting like an idiot at all!”  
She rolled her eyes “you’re both acting like idiots, remember a couple of minutes ago when we had to redo the same training simulation ten times because you both kept running unnecessary risks without thinking about any other member of the team? I got shoved around by those Altean robots so many times I lost count”  
Lance crossed his arms “well if we’re both the problem then why am I the only one here with you?”  
“Don’t flatter yourself Lance, I just thought you might be more reasonable than Keith, cause I’m done with this stupid fight and I’m making sure it ends today”  
He gave her a sceptical look “well I’m not saying I’m sorry for trying to save his ass”  
She groaned in frustration “come on Lance, aren’t you tired of this?”  
“I’m not gonna get tired before him”  
“I’m sure he’s tired alright, I hate listening to him rant”  
He frowned, stubbornly looking down “…he’s the one who said we weren’t together anymore”  
“Oh please Lance, don’t tell me you actually believed him?”  
“Well, he sounded convincing and it’s not like he’s done anything to make me think he wasn’t” he protested defensively.  
Pidge groaned “alright, then I’m going with plan B since you’re being unreasonable”  
“What’s plan B?” he asked, hurrying out of the room after her  
“It’s a surprise Lance” she smirked walking away.

Lance didn’t have to wait long to know what her plan was, nor to realize that everybody on the castle, exception made for Keith, was in on it. They were obviously trying to get the two of them alone somewhere, probably hoping they’d work things out once left to their own devices.  
To his credit, he tried his best to resist, but in the end Hunk was the one who pretty much shoved him into the common room and let the doors swish behind him, sealing them shut from the outside.  
“Hunk! Buddy! Let me out??” he pounded on the metal panel.  
“No Lance, you two make up and I’ll open the door”  
Lance groaned and Hunk added after a moment of thought “I’ll open it if you two start trying to kill each other too, don’t worry”  
“That’s not reassuring at all!?”  
He turned around when he heard some shuffling from the couches behind him, and saw Keith sitting there, staring crossly at the ceiling  
Lance smirked teasingly “Don’t tell me you fell for their tricks?”  
“You’re here too”  
“Well, Hunk just threw me in, that’s not a trick”  
Keith only shrugged, barely looking at him.  
The blue paladin looked around the room for a while, then went to sit down on the opposite couch, feeling awkward already.  
“So…” he started, minutes of silence later “what are we gonna do about this?”  
“They’ll have to get us out, sooner or later they’ll need us for a mission or the castle will get attacked”  
“Right…” he nodded, pointedly avoiding to look at Keith since he was obviously pretending not to see him “or we could make them happy and talk this out?”  
Keith’s brows furrowed together, and the look he gave the ceiling could have probably bored a hole in it “are you gonna apologize for being an idiot?”  
“What!? No I’m not!”  
He shrugged “then we have nothing to talk about”  
Lance made some sort of spluttering sound and turned to look at him “are you ever gonna stop acting like I’m not worthy of your time?”  
Keith raised an eyebrow at him “I’m only waiting for you admit you were wrong”  
“But I wasn’t!”  
Lance could see him take a deep breath though his nose and look to the side, as if he were trying to keep his temper under control, so he pressed on “I was only trying to help, and you got mad because I wouldn’t let you do everything on your own!”  
Keith’s jaw clenched and he stood up abruptly, opting to pace around the room, away from Lance.  
He wasn’t going to be left behind tho, so he just went after him  
“do you even listen to me? Keith! Why the hell are acting like this!” he grabbed his arm, making him turn to face him  
“Because you could have ruined the mission!” Keith snapped, taking a step closer to him, shoulders raised and fists clenched “The prisoners could have gotten hurt, you could have gotten hurt!”  
“The same goes for you! You could have gotten hurt too!”  
“But I had everything under control!”  
“Why can’t you let me help?!”  
“I don’t need any help! Especially from you!” Keith knew straight away that he chose the wrong words when he saw Lance’s face fall so suddenly, it might have been funny in any other situation. He scrambled for a moment to actually remember the words that had just gotten out of his mouth, because damn his temper he kept on saying things he didn’t mean to.  
“So that’s the whole point? Am I not good enough?”  
“Lance no- wait, that’s not what I meant…”  
“Of course that’s exactly what you meant, am I not good enough to be your boyfriend either?” he asked and Keith wasn’t sure if the emotion on his face was more hurt or anger.  
“No Lance I didn’t—“ he was at a loss of words  
“I guess Pidge was right, it was just a legend, it didn’t mean anything…”  
Keith tried touching his shoulder, but Lance took a step back, frowning at him.  
“Lance wait, what legend, what are you talking about?”  
“It doesn’t matter” he shook his head resolutely, and was about to walk back to the doors and ask Hunk to let him out when the siren began blaring through the castle, signalling an imminent attack. Coran’s voice rang through the speakers, announcing a Galra fleet coming for them.  
“Oh quiznack!” Lance banged on the doors, which slid open instants later, almost sending him toppling down. Keith ran past him as he regained his footing and started running as well.

As they flew out of the hangar with their lions, Pidge was nervous, more nervous than usual. She had been.. well, she had been spying on their conversation, but just to make sure they would actually work things out, and from what she had seen and heard they were possibly even further away from a solution than they were before, and Keith had somehow managed to convince Lance that he didn’t value him good enough for anything. She had no idea how they were going to hold up during an attack. She should have minded her own business, or she should have just straight up told Lance that Keith was just as worried about him getting hurt as he was.  
The fleet they were trying to get rid of wasn’t especially vicious, but it was numerous, and with all that was going on their connection when they formed Voltron was shaky at best. Coordinating was hard, they were all doing everything they could to keep it together, but it felt like some sort of gear just refused to turn.  
So it should probably have been less of a shock when they were hit by a blast before they could raise their shield, and Voltron disassembled, the lions hurtling away from the impact. She could hardly distinguish the other paladins’ voices, but she knew they all sounded in a panic, and it wasn’t until she opened her eyes again that she knew why.  
The blue lion was plummeting down, unresponsive and caught by the gravitational pull of a planet they had ended up too close to. And the red lion was racing behind it, desperately trying to slow down the fall towards the planet’s surface.  
She called for them both, her voice shrill with fear, she could hear Shiro commanding her and Hunk to keep their attention on the remaining fleet, Hunk’s nervous answer, Keith’s laboured breathing but nothing from Lance.  
Lance wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, all she heard from Keith was him refusing to come back to them, and in a matter of seconds Red and Blue both disappeared from view, entering the cloudy atmosphere of the planet they were about to crash on.

Lance had been shouting for a while before he realized the reason why he couldn’t hear anyone answering him was that his comms weren’t working anymore. His lion wasn’t responding either, and they were falling, gaining speed by the second and he couldn’t do anything more than tug uselessly at the commands in front of him, hoping for Blue to wake up.  
Then something came crashing onto him, the flash of red he could see telling him it was Keith, trying to stop the fall and only managing to slow it down slightly.  
The red lion was smaller than Blue, and as it was clawing at her from behind, the force of its jets wasn’t enough.  
So they kept falling, Lance’s the visual soon restricted to a few meters in front of his lion’s nose as they were engulfed in clouds, and it took him a few precious moments to realize what else was going on.  
Keith had stopped trying to pull Blue up, and had sprinted forward, letting the other lion crash heavily onto him, effectively slowing down the descent, enough so that Lance thought he might survive it with a bit of luck. Keith was still going to get the worst of it, and with a lighter lion than his, it wasn’t going to be pretty.  
Lance screamed at him, furious that his comms were damaged, and slammed his fist on the controls, in a last attempt to get Blue working again

Keith was frantically trying to do something, to find a solution as quickly as possible. As soon as he had seen the blue lion unresponsive and quickly falling to a crash, he had rushed to catch up with it, calling for Lance, his heart sinking into his stomach when he had gotten no response. He didn’t know how he was, whether his comms weren’t working or he was unconscious or injured or worse.  
And now he was at a loss, Red’s claws had kept slipping over the blue metal once he had first reached the lion, and when he had finally managed to get a firm grip on Blue to pull her back up, he had realized it wasn’t possible. Between the pull of the planet and how heavy the lion was, he didn’t stand a chance, no matter how much he pulled on his controls.  
He saw the clouds swirl around them as they both rushed down, the flashing red lights on his visor alerting him that the ground was getting dangerously close, and he did the first thing he could think about.  
He let go of the blue lion and plunged forward, putting Red in between her and the upcoming ground. It was going to work, all he could think of was making sure Lance was okay, he wouldn’t answer when he shouted for him, he still didn’t know why, but this was gonna work, Lance was going to be alright, he was making sure of that.

The blue paladin was still fighting to regain control of his lion when the crash came, the impact almost sending him flying from his seat despite the seatbelt holding him in place, his head snapping forward and smashing onto the panel in front of him. Hard enough that he didn’t even have time to realize he was blacking out.

He regained consciousness gradually, his senses coming back to him in waves, thick and slow like molasses, each new piece of information sent by his body making him groan in pain. His head hurt, something sticky and warm was crusting on his face, he tried taking a deeper breath and his whole body protested, white hot pain shooting straight through his side.  
He managed to open his eyes after a while, his breaths coming short and ragged as he took in the mess around him. The only light in the cockpit was the emergency one, there were snapped wires hanging around, and judging from the angle everything was at, Blue had landed on her side.  
It took Lance what felt like a long time before his mind stopped swimming about, barely comprehending what his eyes were seeing. The first nebulous thought that formed in his mind was that he was in his lion, and that called back to his memory the last few minutes, with the battle and the fall. A nervousness he couldn’t place yet was making his heart hammer in his chest, and the next thought came to him like a flash of light: Keith was out there.  
He was there, in his lion, probably hurt worse than him and alone. Panic made him move hastily, hissing in pain as he realized a few of his ribs must be bruised, and that the stuff on his face was drying blood, probably closely related to the steady pounding in his head.  
He decided he wasn’t going to stop and investigate what kind of injuries he had: he was awake and he could move as long as he did so slowly. That was going to be more than enough.  
He undid his belt, almost falling sideways on what had been one of the walls of his cockpit, but was now the ground. It took him a few tries before he could walk, everything hurt, his left leg especially, and he had to limp his way to the emergency exit, pushing as hard as he could against the rounded panel until it opened, and he lifted himself out.  
He was drained already and slumped down for a moment, trying to catch his breath while looking around for the red lion.  
She wasn’t far luckily, partly buried into the crater the force of their impact had created and Lance’s heart sunk even more at the sight. Red looked even worse off than Blue, a wide gash open in her side, her eyes unlit.  
He got up again, his legs shaking under his weight, and made his way towards the lion, his progress painstakingly slow.  
Once he finally managed to open the panel to her cockpit he had to stop again, every breath a stab of pain in his chest, his head pounding at the same rhythm of his heart and his leg almost useless with how much it hurt to put any weight on it. He waited for the dizziness to abate and the pain to go back to a more manageable intensity before dragging himself into the red lion.  
Inside things looked bad, whole metal panels were divelled and laying on the ground, the emergency light was flickering on and off.  
“Keith?” he called, leaning heavily against any surface that didn’t give away as he made his way towards the pilot’s seat “Keith, can you hear me?”  
He shuffled on, tripping on the debris littering the floor of the cockpit, his heart beating crazily in his ribcage as he tried not to panic, until he heard a soft moan followed by some other piece of metal falling.  
“Keith!” he walked faster, almost falling and ending up kneeling down next to the pilot’s seat. Keith was there, barely conscious, his helmet cracked and as Lance looked down to make an inventory of his injuries, he barely managed not to gasp when he saw the long stick of metal planted into his side.  
“Keith..” he breathed out, cupping his face, carefully taking off his helmet and looking to see if he had any head injuries. He then held it close to his ear, and hearing the buzzing of static trough the comms tried adjusting the frequency. He was soon greeted by the sound of the other paladins’ voices while they battled the remaining fleet.  
“Guys?” he called urgently “can you hear me?”  
After an instant of silence came Hunk’s voice “Lance!? Oh man it’s so good to hear your voice!”  
“Yeah, I’m good, Keith isn’t, he needs a pod as soon as possible, how long do you have?”  
Shiro’s voice came steady as usual “We’ll be there as soon as we can, the castle is helping”  
Lance nodded, momentarily forgetting they couldn’t see him and looked at Keith’s pale face, a cut on his cheekbone where a shard of glass had hit him.  
The red paladin then moved slightly, a groan escaping his lips and Lance put the helmet back down, touching his face lightly as his eyes opened for a moment, gaze so glassy Lance wasn’t sure he could actually see anything. So he run his fingers though his hair gently, hoping to keep him calm.  
“Hey mullet, can you hear me?”  
Keith scrunched his eyes closed and groaned again, but he nodded “L- Lance..?”  
“The one and only..” he said with a nervous smile  
“..everything hurts—“ his face twisted with pain as he tried moving again and Lance realized that the metal stick impaling him had also pierced through the seat, keeping him stuck there.  
“It’s okay, just don’t move… the others will come help us soon” he wanted to distract him, wanted to make sure he didn’t realize he had a part of his lion passing straight though his middle, because as things were he was not bleeding out at the very least, but seeing something like that could easily send him into shock.  
Keith nodded eyes still closed against the pain and breathing shallow and controlled “are— are you okay? You weren’t answering… I thought- I thought you were hurt”  
Lance took his hand, squeezing it a little “I’m alright but I’m pissed, what you did was so stupid, you could be dead..”  
Keith frowned, opening his eyes again and trying to focus on the face in front of him  
“You’d be dead for sure if I hadn’t done it..” his eyes slid closed once more and he rested his head on the seat, trying to keep his breathing under control before he spoke again.  
“I- I’m sorry about earlier, I was.. just trying to say that I didn’t want you getting hurt because of me… I do stupid shit all the time, you can’t risk it for me”  
“Sounded more like you were tired of me already”  
“I told you I’m bad with words…”  
Lance’s chuckle was short lived as the pain in his chest made him suck in a breath.  
“Are you really okay?” Keith pried an eye open again, finally registering the dried blood on Lance’s face.  
“I’m well enough..” he managed a smile and Keith gave him a doubtful look before letting out a slow exhale.  
Pain kept coming over him in waves, even breathing hurt and he felt like something in him was broken, but wasn’t eager to look down and find out what it was. Last time he had felt so much pain was when he had broken his leg, and the sight of his bone sticking out of his flesh was still all too fresh in his mind.  
Minutes went by and Keith stopped trying to move into a better position, it was way too painful and the way Lance gasped every time he saw him moving a little was enough to make him guess that something was seriously wrong with him.  
Once the pain seemed barely more manageable Keith looked at Lance again, squeezing back on his hand  
“Are you still pissed at me?”  
“A bit, but I won’t be for long” he smirked, his fingers brushing back the dark hair from Keith’s face “you did exactly what you were mad at me for”  
The red paladin’s lips curved slightly up as well “you make me do stupid things sometimes…”  
“You too, mullet” he kissed his forehead, praying for the others to come quickly and help him.

After allowing himself a few moments of relative calm, Lance took in a deep breath. Keith was bleeding, not as much as he would if Lance were to remove that metal pole, but blood was still dripping steadily from the wound and trickling onto the floor. Even once they had help from the others, they’d still have to move Keith, bring him back into the castle, take the metal object out and put him into a pod as fast they could.  
So Lance decided he was going to buy them some time and try to stop some of the bleeding while stabilizing the pole sticking out of his boyfriend. He sighed, squeezing Keith’s hand again before grunting in pain as he pulled himself up on his legs.  
“Where are you going?” the red paladin’s eyes were still closed, his breathing still controlled but the way his voice cracked slightly betrayed the sharp edge of fear underneath.  
“To get the medical kit, I’ll be right back”  
It was easier said than done. The kit was only a few steps away from the pilot’s seat, but Lance was feeling worn out already. He groaned in frustration when he saw the pile of metal and rubber debris blocking the panel behind which it was stored.  
“W-what’s wrong?” came Keith’s voice, punctuated by a pained gasp  
“Nothing, I told you not to move” he scolded and set to work, making slow progress and having to stop much more often than he’d have liked to admit, only to catch his breath.  
He wasn’t sure how long it was taking him, Keith calling him again made him wonder how much time had passed.  
“Lance?”  
He could guess how tightly Keith was grinding his teeth by the way his words sounded  
“It’s okay, there was just some stuff in the way, I’ll be there in a bit… how’re you doing?”  
Lance could hear him huff slightly  
“could be better”  
“Yeah… you’ll be okay, the others are coming to help” he hoped he was being reassuring and went back to working as fast as he could, and before long he finally got the panel to open and took the kit out.  
Lance limped the way back to the front of the cockpit and sat down heavily on the ground, panting and dizzy from the pain and the effort it had taken him to stand upright.  
“I’m here, I’m here..” he closed his eyes waiting for the world to stop spinning and reached blindly for Keith’s hand, squeezing it tight. The warm feeling he felt when the other paladin squeezed back was enough to keep the fear at bay.  
“Okay…” Lance breathed out after a while, straightening up a little and looking at the pole sticking out of Keith “okay…” he repeated, trying to figure out a way to wrap the bandages around him.  
“Saying it isn’t gonna make this any more okay Lance” Keith gritted out and peeked an eye open to look at him  
“One has to try” Lance smirked at him, planting a kiss on his gloved hand  
“You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?”  
“I’ll figure it out, you don’t worry”  
Keith nodded, closing his eyes again and letting himself drift in and out of consciousness for a while, until a sharp pain in his side makes him gasp for air, eyes wide and unseeing before he registers Lance’s voice calling him, his hand caressing his face  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry Keith, I’ll be careful, just don’t move-“  
The blue paladin’s blabbering helped him ground himself after a while, eyes focusing on his worried face as he tried regaining control of his breathing  
“..Lance-“  
“I’m so sorry.. I’ll be done soon, I promise”  
Keith shook his head, struggling a bit to keep his eyes focused against the fuzziness that crawled at the corners of his vision and he had no idea where the question even came from, but he desperately needed to think about something else, and to take that panicked expression away from Lance’s face  
“W- what legend.. were you talking about?”  
Lance paused, giving him a confused look “what?”  
“you said… that Pidge was right about it..”  
“Oh” he couldn’t help a small smile “it’s nothing, just something silly” he said going back to work with the gauze.  
Keith flinched again and his voice came out more whiny than he intended “please? Just tell me“  
“Okay, you just keep calm, you’ll be alright soon”  
he nodded, looking at him for a while before letting his eyes slide closed once more and concentrating only on the sound of Lance’s voice.  
The blue paladin took a deep breath, his fingers unsure as he tried working without hurting him again and his voice was slightly unsteady when he spoke  
“This is nothing fancy, but do you remember that mission I went on months ago? The planet’s name was Larium, I think I showed you pictures of it, it’s always dark over there, there are glowing plants everywhere, it’s really pretty. I just had to talk to some of the elders there to gather information, and after that they gave me nice tour of the palace. It was pretty much the usual until they took me to the gardens, they had a really cool greenhouse there, it was full of light from all the glowing plants, and we were just walking and chatting and I was smelling the flowers cause what else are you supposed to do in a greenhouse?”  
Keith smirked a little, eyes still closed “You’re not supposed to smell the alien flowers”  
“Yeah well, I know now, I didn’t give it much thought back then. Pidge has been researching cause she really wanted to find out what happened with me and the whole almost dying because of flowers suddenly suffocating me thing. All she could find in the end was a sort of legend from this planet I visited..”  
He paused, unsure how to go on and took his time adjusting the bandage  
“What did the legend say?”  
“Well, there are some particular flowers over there, that don’t glow at all, they’re just black, and they say if you smell them, a flower will bloom in your chest if you meet someone special.. someone you’re destined to..” he knows he’s blushing, and now that he’s done trying to stop the bleeding he doesn’t have much to distract himself from the way his cheeks are burning “I told you this was silly”  
“Then.. how did you heal?”  
“If that special someone has feelings for you too, the plant is supposed to disappear..”  
Keith opened an eye again, looking for Lance and finding him staring at the ground  
“Am I.. special then?”  
Lance chuckled, sucking in a sharp breath when the movement sent pain radiating into his chest  
“I guess so?” he slid down again to sit onto the ground, waiting for another wave of dizziness to abate  
“..it’s a bit like a soulmate, right?” he couldn’t help mumbling despite feeling embarrassed about it.  
And when he looked up to Keith’s face he saw his own pale cheeks become pink with the ghost of a blush.  
Keith tried focusing on him again, his head swimming dangerously as he tried to take in all the small details of his face “I’m lucky.. only a soulmate could put up with me”  
He was sure he was gonna pass out again soon, and he squeezed Lance’s hand lightly, barely aware of the fact that the other was fighting to stay awake as well.

Keith couldn’t remember much of what happened after that. He vaguely remembered panicked voices and pain, a lot of pain as he was moved and touched, and nothing else. When he finally fully woke up again he realized he was in an healing pod, the cold bluish liquid around him disappearing in the blink of an eye as the glass opened to let him out.  
He stumbled forward, landing onto a familiar chest, Shiro’s arms wrapped carefully around him and he smiled at how safe he felt there. It was a short lived instant of peace, because the others’ voices came right away, calling him back into reality as Hunk and Pidge came crashing onto him for a group hug.  
“Guys-!” he gasped in surprise  
“WE WERE SO WORRIED!” wailed Hunk squeezing him tight  
“YOU DO SOMETHING SO STUPID AGAIN I’LL PUNCH YOU!” Pidge sniffled nuzzling her face into his shoulder  
“Uh… sorry?”  
Shiro gave him a stern look “she’s right, you could have died doing something like that”  
“But-“ he was about to protest when he remembered that Lance must have been injured too, his face had been full of blood after all…  
“where’s he? Where’s Lance?” he asked whipping his head around to see over the three paladins still hugging him.  
“He’s alright” Allura’s reassuring voice came from his left as she walked up to them “he woke up a couple of vargas before you, he’s resting in his room”  
“The boy was fairly reluctant to leave the infirmary before you, but as I’m sure you can feel too, you still need to recover some of your energy” Coran smiled at him and Keith nodded, realizing that his whole body felt stiff and sore.  
Shiro’s arms tightened slightly around him as he spoke “we can take you to your room”  
“Or maybe Lance’s room?” Pidge smirked at him as he flushed  
“Yeah” Hunk nodded “definitely Lance’s room”

So, partly to tease him and partly to actually do him a favour, they did actually insist on carrying Keith the whole way to Lance’s room and dumping him there.  
He didn’t have much to complain about, he had slept in Lance’s room and borrowed his pajamas quite often in the few months of their relationship. He could hear Lance breathing evenly in his bed, the sound so reassuring he felt like he could melt, so he quickly changed out of his bodysuit and slipped into the soft blue clothes, sighing in relief as soon as his aching body hit the mattress.  
Lance was sleeping soundly right next to him, his body warm, solid and reassuring, and Keith had barely time to get under the covers before he was being pulled into sleep again.

He woke up feeling light and content, a feeling so rare he smiled and kept his eyes closed, nuzzling his cheek into the pillow and hoping to hold onto it for a bit longer. The reason why he was awake in the first place became evident pretty soon, as he felt strong arms run around his waist pulling him closer, and soft lips kissing lazy patterns on his face. Keith couldn’t help smiling a little wider, eyes still closed as he leaned closer still into the touch and hid his face against Lance’s neck.  
“You woke up” he heard him whisper  
“Of course I did, I’m not some frail damsel”  
Lance laughed heartily, the sound sending sparks through Keith’s chest “gosh are you as far from a damsel as they come”  
He smirked, looking up at him “suck it up, destiny binds us or some shit, doesn’t it?”  
Lance spluttered “I- you actually remember that!?”  
“Did you think I’d forget it?”  
“You were barely conscious!”  
“Unlike someone, I happen to have a good memory” he teased and smiled widely when Lance shut him up with a kiss  
"You're mine forever then, you know that?" the blue paladin smirked down at him and Keith just chuckled locking his hands behind his neck and pulling him down to kiss him again.


End file.
